Federal prosecutors are expected to file criminal charges on Wednesday against Rajat K. Gupta, the most prominent business executive ensnared in an aggressive insider trading investigation, according to people briefed on the case.

The case against Mr. Gupta, 62, who is expected to surrender to F.B.I. agents on Wednesday, would extend the reach of the government’s inquiry into America’s most prestigious corporate boardrooms. Most of the defendants charged with insider trading over the last two years have plied their trade exclusively on Wall Street.

The charges would also mean a stunning fall from grace of a trusted adviser to political leaders and chief executives of the world’s most celebrated companies.

A former director of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble and the longtime head of McKinsey & Company, the elite consulting firm, Mr. Gupta has been under investigation over whether he leaked corporate secrets to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager who was sentenced this month to 11 years in prison for trading on illegal stock tips.

The case against Mr. Gupta, who lives in Westport, Conn., would tie up a major loose end in the long-running investigation of Mr. Rajaratnam’s hedge fund, the Galleon Group. Yet federal authorities continue their campaign to ferret out insider trading on multiple fronts. This month, for example, a Denver-based hedge fund manager and a chemist at the Food and Drug Administration pleaded guilty to such charges.

A spokeswoman for the United States attorney in Manhattan declined to comment.

😯 Mr. Gupta, in his role at the helm of McKinsey, was a trusted adviser to business leaders including Jeffrey R. Immelt, of General Electric, and Henry R. Kravis, of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company. A native of Kolkata, India, and a graduate of the Harvard Business School, Mr. Gupta has also been a philanthropist, serving as a senior adviser to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mr. Gupta also served as a special adviser to the United Nations.

His name emerged just a week before Mr. Rajaratnam’s trial in March, when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an administrative proceeding against him. The agency accused Mr. Gupta of passing confidential information about Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble to Mr. Rajaratnam, who then traded on the news.

The details were explosive. Authorities said Mr. Gupta gave Mr. Rajaratnam advanced word of Warren E. Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs during the darkest days of the financial crisis in addition to other sensitive information affecting the company’s share price.

At the time, federal prosecutors named Mr. Gupta a co-conspirator of Mr. Rajaratnam, but they never charged him. Still, his presence loomed large at Mr. Rajaratnam’s trial. Lloyd C. Blankfein,:roll: the chief executive of Goldman, testified about Mr. Gupta’s role on the board and the secrets he was privy to, including earnings details and the bank’s strategic deliberations.

The legal odyssey leading to charges against Mr. Gupta could serve as a case study in law school criminal procedure class. He fought the S.E.C.’s civil action, which would have been heard before an administrative judge. Mr. Gupta argued that the proceeding denied him of his constitutional right to a jury trial and treated him differently than the other Mr. Rajaratnam-related defendants, all of whom the agency sued in federal court.

Mr. Gupta, in his role at the helm of McKinsey, was a trusted adviser to business leaders including Jeffrey R. Immelt, of General Electric, and Henry R. Kravis, of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company. A native of Kolkata, India, and a graduate of the Harvard Business School, Mr. Gupta has also been a philanthropist, serving as a senior adviser to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mr. Gupta also served as a special adviser to the United Nations.

Well THEIR game, in which the US and the immigrants and second generationals participated, was they played at being “the better blacks”: NO We are not racists, we are not a racist nation, look at our compliant smart rich imported “blacks”. And so on. There was always bound to be a price… a showily paid price. Sounds like Raj and Gupta are paying it.

i’m hoping that before the pitch forks and torches break into the vaults of Goldman Sachs the vainly sacrifice one of their own on the altar of “justice” not as some sort of appeasement, but rather an appetizer for the long pig feast to come 😈

GET OUT OF JAIL FREE. One thing we can still be proud of is that America hasn’t yet managed to achieve the highest incarceration rate in history — that honor still goes to the Soviets in the Stalin/Gulag era. But we do still have about 2.3 million people in jail in America.

Virtually all 2.3 million of those prisoners come from “the 99%.” Here is the number of bankers who have gone to jail for crimes related to the financial crisis: 0.

Millions of people have been foreclosed upon in the last three years. In most all of those foreclosures, a regional law enforcement office — typically a sheriff’s office — was awarded fees by the court as part of the foreclosure settlement, settlements which of course were often rubber-stamped by a judge despite mountains of perjurious robosigned evidence.

That means that every single time a bank kicked someone out of his home, a local police department got a cut. Local sheriff’s offices also get cuts of almost all credit card judgments, and other bank settlements. If you’re wondering how it is that so many regional police departments have the money for fancy new vehicles and SWAT teams and other accoutrements, this is one of your answers.

What this amounts to is the banks having, as allies, a massive armed police force who are always on call, ready to help them evict homeowners and safeguard the repossession of property. But just see what happens when you try to call the police to prevent an improper foreclosure. Then, suddenly, the police will not get involved. It will be a “civil matter” and they won’t intervene.

The point being: if you miss a few home payments, you have a very high likelihood of colliding with a police officer in the near future. But if you defraud a pair of European banks out of a billion dollars — that’s a billion, with a b — you will never be arrested, never see a policeman, never see the inside of a jail cell.

Your settlement will be worked out not with armed police, but with regulators in suits who used to work for your company or one like it. And you’ll have, defending you, a former head of that regulator’s agency. In the end, a fine will be paid to the government, but it won’t come out of your pocket personally; it will be paid by your company’s shareholders. And there will be no admission of criminal wrongdoing.

The Abacus case, in which Goldman helped a hedge fund guy named John Paulson beat a pair of European banks for a billion dollars, tells you everything you need to know about the difference between our two criminal justice systems. The settlement was $550 million — just over half of the damage.

Can anyone imagine a common thief being caught by police and sentenced to pay back half of what he took? Just one low-ranking individual in that case was charged (case pending), and no individual had to reach into his pocket to help cover the fine. The settlement Goldman paid to to the government was about 1/24th of what Goldman received from the government just in the AIG bailout. And that was the toughest “punishment” the government dished out to a bank in the wake of 2008.

The point being: we have a massive police force in America that outside of lower Manhattan prosecutes crime and imprisons citizens with record-setting, factory-level efficiency, eclipsing the incarceration rates of most of history’s more notorious police states and communist countries.

But the bankers on Wall Street don’t live in that heavily-policed country. There are maybe 1000 SEC agents policing that sector of the economy, plus a handful of FBI agents. There are nearly that many police officers stationed around the polite crowd at Zucotti park.

These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don’t want handouts. It’s not a class uprising and they don’t want civil war — they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It’s amazing that some people think that that’s asking a lot.

8:10pm Pacific: Reports via Twitter that Oakland police are bringing out a “sound cannon,” a non-lethal weapon that shoots intense rays of sound to disperse crowds. Not sure yet if this is true. I’ve covered this for NPR and Boing Boing previously, and experienced a controlled test of it myself at a military location. The device is no joke. This reporter just confirmed the presence of an LRAD device on the scene, and OPD saying they intend to use it if crowd does not disperse.

They did use it.. live vid picked it up, the video should be on archive soon.. Pittsburgh deployed them during the G20…
Deafening Machines.
Some very sick irony in all that.

Just one among a slew of military-grade weapony now aimed at civilians, their domestic rollout, (and contractual grafters wet-dream) all courtesy of that Neocon-necrophiliac, that Zionist Hell-on-Earth bent sicko at DHS,…. CHERTOFF.

Well, eventually, however reluctantly, I think individuals long before they consent to ANYTHING let alone identify themselves as part of “a movement”, individuals need to come to some serious resolution regarding how they feel about coercion to say the least, and. in its most coercive form: the use of violence on the other.. People (I’d like to believe) are in the midst of mulling thru the conscientious objections one has over violence and premises held regarding the illegitimate or legitimate use of force on the other..

.It is not enough IMO to profess “love” for Police or “Marines” individually or in the abstract , – without acknowledging, however implicitly, that their use of force is at times,……necessary.
Oh yu can go down the Love the Sinnerbut not The Sin road, but how can you love what is wrong? Necessarily one admits gradations.

And that’s not necessarily an endorsement either.
But you know, if we were talking Ethics 101 meets 5 Dollar ATM Fees that can all be handled quite civilly.
And a strong argument could be made among us in Frivoloushitville USA that the cost of getting het up about three hundred hundred bucks an ass-bite year could be better Karma-expressed as Bankster forgiveness or personally written off while individual and movement resources protesting the goddamn unfortunate perturbance could be better spent in the community.

I’m beginning to feel that the Dem sponsored crackdown is “good”: it will assure there is no co-option or selling out to those vichys because of their use of the kocksuking pinkertons…and I really don’t think they’re going to stop anything…a lot of these folks have no where else to go…

By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO Bulatlat.com MANILA — Urban poor groups trooped to the government housing agency to protest the massive demolition of homes in North and East Triangle areas to give way to the Quezon City Central Business District project. In a statement, Alyansa Kontra Demolition, an alliance of urban poor groups, said their […]

Past my bedtime back in the late 50’s but I think* (memory fades now and again) I think I remember seeing a rebroadcast of Mike Wallace interviewing Fidel Castro and Wallace asked something like this:“You come and fight , you come down from the mountains, you approach the cities, and you are always thrown back to the hills,
Why do you do it?”

Over the last two weeks I’ve seen a community rise up seemingly out of nowhere — one based on consensus decision-making and strong anti-oppression values for all people involved. One that included free food and a clean kitchen, a community garden, free school and twice-daily yoga.

Last night I saw that community torn apart by a show of force so grossly outrageous in terms of mass of force, brutality, and cost to an already broke city that nearly shut down most of its libraries, and is on the verge of closing schools.

All day rumors of an impending eviction had been swirling around the tent city occupation in Frank Ogawa Plaza. After several nights of false alarms, campers seemed split over what to believe on Monday. It was Occupy Oakland’s two-week anniversary, and a group of demonstrators partied at the 14th and Broadway plaza entrance with cake, balloons and dancing. The General Assembly was smaller; there were clearly more tents missing than on the previous day. But people were engaged, and strides were made. Someone announced that a nearby church had donated use of its kitchen for the Occupation. There would no longer be a need for the propane the city had found so problematic. There was more talk of growing the camp than defending it. When I went home around 2:30am to feed my cat and charge my phone, I felt confident the plaza was safe for the night.

Halfway through my tea I read on Twitter that campers had spotted police mobilizing a few blocks from the camp. By the time I arrived back at the plaza, campers had barricaded the perimeter of the camp as well as the entrances to the plaza. I walked the perimeter and didn’t see any police, so I entered the camp, where feelings were tense. That’s when I heard the roar of police motorcycles on Broadway. By the time I pulled my video camera out and crossed the street, about 500 Oakland police and supporting troops from more than a dozen nearby departments were mobilizing in riot gear, clubs and guns in hand. They announced that by remaining in the camp, protestors might face “chemical agents” and “bodily injury.”

I couldn’t get the man making the announcements to meet my eye.

A few minutes later, police broke their lines and some of the news vans along 14th were allowed to leave. It was then I noticed that I and a couple dozen others who were primarily filming the police action were now between a second and third line of officers. We were pinned. I heard a few pops, a flash, a crack, and saw a puff of white smoke that kept growing. Suddenly we were moving quickly down 14th street, followed by a cloud of tear gas. At least 85 protesters were arrested, of the approximately 200 who remained in the plaza. Many remain in jail on $7,500-$10,000 bails awaiting arraignment on Thursday.

More than an hour later, after shutting down much of downtown Oakland within a large barricaded perimeter, and after the end of park curfew at 6am, police mobilized to clear out Snow Park, the expansion sister camp to the main plaza. Several protesters were arrested there after refusing to leave their camp, which had been facing eviction notices for nearly a week. The demonstrators there had brought a manual lawnmower and were maintaining the overgrown park; they had no portable toilets or sanitation issues; and they were not cooking with an open flame. When asked why they were arrested during open park hours, one officer responded that the park was “a crime scene” so it could be closed at any time. At that point I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m serious,” he said.

These camps are now flattened, but occupiers remain defiant. As I write this, people are organizing. That’s what I feel the need to do here, but while I want to provide more synthesis, I don’t feel like I can do that yet. I came to Occupy Oakland as an independent journalist and it was made known to me that my right to free speech as a member of the media is about as valuable to the city of Oakland as the rights of the occupation that they’re holding in cells. I think I’m still reeling.

But I guess what I’m saying is that the city council meeting might be kind of crowded tonight.

(fuck the Daily Mail’s (picture source) ‘text,’ ..outside of the headline: Gassed in her wheelchair at the battle of Oakland: Disabled woman caught up as riot police beat back protesters trying to retake Occupy Wall Street camp, (a camp which they have far, far more ownership in than the sleazy Mother Fuckers calling the shots), and most of the ‘comments,’ along with the articles sadistic ‘URL’ ….(talk about Ratticus Norwegicii calling squirrels: WORTHLESS DESPICABLE RODENTS.))

I have no doubt Obama, has been updated/obeyed, along with the BiPartisan, Golden Shower Cali Ghoul Politicians, most every step of the way, including the insane bail requirements. I’ll bet they can’t wait to fly those drones over the desolate urban skies of the $US$ of AmeriKa.

well considering her ivy league background I think that despite being born in the common folk feed lot when we come to eat the rich her liver will foie gras and the ass and backstrap as tender as Kobe beef when we make rump roasts… 😈

I like ducks.
Ducks are pretty.
And often have interesting things to say.
But you know, they’re ducks.

I’m more of a Canadian Geese man, myself.
They fly in, have no problem WHATSOEVER about crapping on the lawn, and when Shnerdensen acrss the street comes out all het up bathrobe and slippers and morning paper like and goes: “HEY! What the Fuck Are You DOING??!??
Crappping on the Lawn Like THAT!!??

They just turn , smile, with many flippin the wing,,
and simply continue all Canadian Goose-Pooping away. 😆 😉

President Obama is taking credit for a new government plan to “save homeowners.” That is of course pure propaganda to mask the plan’s true goal: the perfection of debt-serfdom. The basic thrust of the plan is straightforward: encourage “underwater” homeowners whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes to re-finance at lower rates. The stated incentive (i.e. the PR pitch) is to lower homeowners’ monthly payments via lower interest rates.

This is the Federal Reserve’s entire game plan in a nutshell: don’t write off any debt, as that would reveal the banking sector’s insolvency, but play extend-and-pretend with crushing debtloads by lowering the cost of servicing the debt.

The key purpose of this “plan” is to leave the principle owed to banks on their books at full value while ensnaring the hapless debt-serf (the “homeowner”) into permanent servitude to the banks.

If the net worth of your home is a negative number, then what exactly do you own? You have the right to occupy the shelter, and you own the debt. So how is this any different from a lease? There is no equity, and no equity being built: there is a monthly payment in return for the right to occupy the dwelling.

Oh but he’s great with investors. LOL.
I still say his 2009 loss was quite the bellwether.
Like clockworjk, when election time came around, the various mook-carrying-cars would pull into neighborhood, up to Dem afil homes, with a couple of party hacks looking to GOTV. And people would just drop the lawn rakes , dash to curb, just to fucking harangue them to death, just goin on and on about how much they LOATHE Corzine, the DP, and how they couldn’t give a fuck if MUSSOLINI was elected. …

We are in the initial stages of what will be a long series of struggles. We shouldn’t be wedded to any static plan or draw from outdated blueprints or de-contextualized (or unintelligible) theories. The inequalities we seek to destroy are primarily political – about power and self-determination – or the lack thereof. The general sentiment of the Occupy movement is about transcending existing political institutions, about ridding ourselves of politicians, not replacing them. I think that those of us who hadn’t come to the conclusion already are beginning to see that speaking truth to power is not a strategy, or even a logical impulse.

The movement from the occupation of public parks to the occupation of private property, workplaces, universities, shuttered public schools in many cities, foreclosed homes, etc. is a likely scenario in the coming months. Tactical escalation will necessitate political and organizational development to broaden our bases and begin to gain the active and engaged support of larger and larger segments of the broader society. The movement needs to align itself with the struggles of the most oppressed – making issues like police brutality and occupation in communities of color, persecution of immigrants and acute joblessness central – while also linking with university student struggles over fees, student loans, and cuts, and with workers inside and outside of workplaces. The State’s biggest fear is the coalescing of these populations and the existing movements around these issues. We saw this in the non-profit/police/media/politician mantra of outside agitators when anarchists joined the Oscar Grant struggle. Their biggest fear is in our solidarity, in our collaboration and potential cohesion. We need to figure a way to be their waking, spreading, ever-present nightmare.

The idea that 99% of the population in this country is going to support a just social order, here and now, is more than a little naive, but believing that simple protest and activism alone will transform this society is even more naive. We need to build our own political structures and our own politics, rooted in participatory and accountable democratic processes at the local level.

I am not proposing a vanguard party or even a platform. I am simply trying to push the conversation. We shouldn’t misread the Zapatista call to ‘make the road by walking it’ as being synonymous with the old deadhead slogan ‘Not all who wander are lost.’ We don’t have to march in line, but we don’t have time to wander.

If we, in fact, ‘want everything,’ lets figure out how to get it. And then get on with getting it.

There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
Having a home considered a human right in Libya.
All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 dinar (U.S.$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 percent of Libyans were literate. Today, the figure is 83 percent.
(etc.)

To reduce the burden on money managers, the SEC abandoned a plan to require them to certify the filings under penalty of perjury. It agreed that they can use their own methodologies instead of a standardized approach to compute certain measurements in the reports. It gave firms more time to file the reports, and for managers of private equity funds, it reduced the frequency of the filings from quarterly to annually.

The rules require more information from firms that manage larger amounts of money, and more from managers of big hedge funds than from managers of big private equity funds.

The reports are meant to inform a new federal overseer, the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Schapiro said that the agency concluded that private equity funds –which typically buy publicly traded companies, take them private and try to improve their performance before selling shares to the public again — pose less risk to the financial system.

It seems that the fight originated from an opposition MP, who has declared he “won’t budge an inch” on his opposition to imposing austerity policies on government workers, received a sarcastic comment from an MP in the ruling coalition about how his wife retired from service at 39.

I’m in agreement – they should fight it out physically. Forget the filibuster, drop a cage down from the rafters and start the no holds barred contest. They could charge admission and bring down the deficit.

And I would certainly not question a D’s commitment to the people if they cold-cocked an R after a floor vote…or vice versa.

My money’s on the French, they’ve got something to prove since the Wars and algeria and all that . Germans are too confident their banks can work better than their tanks did. Its the French that’ll show’em. MEbbe small, big fist and all that. Besides if I was to cast a some big budget period piece epic on Napoleon Sarkozy WOULD be the lead despite his lack of professional acting experience…

During the Tuesday afternoon rally, as about 500 people gathered outside the city’s main library at 14th and Madison streets, organizers announced that police “called the library in anticipation of our gathering and asked them to shut it down. They said, ‘No,’ because they know what side they are on.”

The crowd exploded into cheers. On Wednesday morning, library Director Carmen Martinez said the City had supported her decision to keep the library open.

In the early afternoon Tuesday, hours before the protest arrived at the library steps, City Administrator Deanna Santana called Martinez and asked how she wanted to handle the situation, Martinez said.

“I said that we are a symbol of civil society for a lot of groups, including this one, and the folks who protested against the libraries budget cuts, and we will remain open as along as service can be continued without disruption,” Martinez said. “Deanna said she understood and respected that.”

Police also called to ask if the library needed any help or backup, Martinez said, but she declined.

At about 5 p.m., however, with the crowd already shutting
down an entire block of 14th Street, Santana called back with information that a second group was on its way and could make it impossible for library staff to leave, Martinez said, so the library ended up closing a half-hour early.

I am watching local live shots (ABC affiliate) of gathering happening in Oakland… I see LOTS of older people, well over 50. Holding signs, so there is no mistaking why they are there…. (Separation of Corporation and State – is a good one!)

Read the breathless reports yesterday about how the ne’er-do-wells in Oakland were throwing rocks and explosives at the helpless, innocent police. Of course, Yoohoo and MSNBS had no actual footage of any flying rocks or explosives.

It’s like the “news” orgs don’t even try anymore. It’s just filler between diet advice and urgent info about some pop warbler’s newborn’s nosejob or something

[O]lsen suffered a head injury on Tuesday night, and is now in critical condition in Oakland’s Highland Hospital. Jay Finneburgh, a photographer on the scene, managed to witness and take pictures of the incident.

“This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up,” Finneburgh wrote.

At first, Doctors told Olsen’s friends that he was in critical, but stable condition. Now they’re being told that his skull has been fractured and his brain is beginning to swell. Neurologists are in the process of determining whether or not he will require surgery. …….

ALSO the closing of 5 schools in Oakland was finally announced between yesterday and today… all very contentious now for months, all 5 in neighborhoods of color. News is reporting the “parents are marching” to the School Board meeting tonight. From the cross streets (Broadway and something), I think it is downtown.

But I read that a low percentage of females have received even a first shot of the cycle of three… and an even lower %, 40% in fact have gotten all three. Apparently it is expensive, 400.00 for the medicine alone.

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.